Advice
Notes from the trade
The block is usually a story you are telling about the work. These are the counter-stories that keep professionals at the desk — full notes on habit, voice, criticism, and the unglamorous middle of a book, by Stewart Ferris.
Inspiration is a luxury, not a prerequisite
Professionals write on Tuesdays. The myth of the waiting muse is a very elegant way to protect a blank page.
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Your voice is the only USP that cannot be stolen
Plots travel. Premises get recycled. What a reader follows from book to book is the particular way you notice the world.
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Learn to love the sting
A note that hurts is usually a note that found something. The amateur defends the sentence; the professional asks why the reader stumbled.
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A daily page beats a brilliant intention
Books are not written on bank holidays in a farmhouse, except in the blurbs of people who also wrote on wet Wednesdays.
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Structure is how you write when the muse is out
Knowing the next turn — even roughly — means you are never staring at infinity.
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The first draft is allowed to be dreadful
You cannot edit a void. You can edit a mess. Lower the status of the current page until it is merely clay.
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Finish, then decide
Abandoned work cannot be improved, sold, or learned from. A finished imperfect piece teaches you more than a perfect fragment.
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Sending work out is a craft of its own
The block sometimes is not on the page. It is at the envelope. Read the guidelines. Keep a list. Expect silence.
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Begin before you are ready
Readiness is a moving target. The page does not require you to feel like a writer. It requires a sentence.
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Rereading is not writing
Going back over yesterday's pages feels like work. It is often a way of not meeting the next blank.
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Dialogue is what people do, not what they explain
If a character is saying what you need the reader to know, the reader can hear the author clearing their throat.
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Cut the sentence you are proud of
The line you want to frame is often the line that stopped the scene so it could be admired.
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Research has a closing time
The library is a respectable place to hide. Another article is not the chapter.
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The middle is where novels go to hide
Beginnings are a performance. Endings are a reckoning. The middle is a long Tuesday, and Tuesdays are where books stall.
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Tell the truth, show the trouble
'Show, don't tell' is useful until it becomes a ban on sentences that know what they think.
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Point of view is a contract
The reader agrees to borrow one mind, or to stand at a measured distance. Breaking the agreement without a reason feels like a shove.
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A title is a promise you can keep
The title is the first sentence strangers read, and it is doing sales work whether you like the idea or not.
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The synopsis is part of the book
A synopsis is not a school exercise. It is the book told to a busy stranger who has forty other stories in the pile.
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What to do with an empty afternoon
An unplanned hour is a gift the block knows how to spend for you, usually on other people's words.
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Read like a thief
Reading only for pleasure is a fine life. Reading while you are trying to write is also a form of study, and study can be specific.
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The notebook is not the novel
Notes feel like progress. A notebook can be a warehouse of beginnings that never has to choose.
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Give the work a date
A book without a deadline is a hobby that can always start properly next month.
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When a character will not speak
Silence on the page is sometimes mystery. More often it is a writer who knows the character's job and not their appetite.
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Revision is rewriting, not tidying
Changing words is the visible part. Changing what a scene is for is the part that improves the book.
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The fear of being ordinary
A great deal of writer's block is the suspicion that your particular notice of the world is not worth a stranger's time.
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Every scene needs a turn
A scene in which the situation at the end matches the situation at the start is a conversation you could have cut.
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Writing beside a day job
Most books are written in the hours that do not look like a writer's life. The myth of the free day is a way of postponing the hour you actually have.
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The day after a rejection
A no arrives, often on a morning when you had allowed yourself to hope. The work of that day is not to be noble. It is to not make a permanent decision.
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The first pages are a promise, not a preface
Readers decide early. They are not obliged to wait for chapter three, where you have hidden the good part.
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Count the words, then forget the number
A word count is a measure of presence. It is a poor measure of worth, and a disastrous measure to watch while the sentence is still being born.
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